Why Malays cannot unite

By Mansor bin Puteh

Of course a study on why Melayu have problems to unite, despite professing a single religion of Islam, unfortunately has never been done by anyone before, not even in the form of a doctoral thesis at the so-called ‘centers of Islamic studies’ that one can see in many top universities in the west; even though the reasons for this to happen are obvious.

If this had been done decades earlier, then surely the state of Melayu-Melayu and Melayu and non-Melayu relations in the country could have been better today and most likely the problems of Arab Disunity too could have been solved and Palestine FREED without Palestinians becoming victims of Israeli aggression, and dismantling the powerful Zionist Lobby in Washington, DC called AIPAC and the pro-Zionist media networks and organizations, in the process!

But what the Melayu and Muslim political leaders are proud to do and achieve is seen in the establishment of the many associations and universities, whose officials and scholars, all of which had failed to even ponder on the main issue of Melayu and Muslim Unity and to find ways to cause this to happen.

On the contrary, and ironically, the more such associations and universities are established, this created more reason for Melayu and Muslims to be disunited as can be seen today.

This is due to the one-upmanship practiced by many Melayu and Muslim experts and scholars and those who hold political office who like to espouse their own personal interpretation on Melayu and Islamic matters wherever they can.

A Melayu mind and mentality can be easily manipulated as much as their Muslim brethren, the Arabs, who despite their sheer size and immense wealth, can be easily manipulated to spend trillions of dollars to fight each other, simply because their common enemy, Israel and the Zionist-Jews, knew how to do that.

The world is not getting any better for the Arabs as much as the Melayu in Malaysia, whose demographic advantage has been taken for granted by a minority of former China immigrants with dreams of ‘Greater China’, using the unusually irrelevant slogan of ‘Malaysian Malaysia’.

Yet, no scholar with some national or international reputation on the related disciplines such psychology, sociology, history, economics, political science and religion or ‘ugama’.

And because of that discontent amongst the Melayu has not only become less prevalent but more obvious with the advent of the social media and pseudo-political activities and one-upmanship which the Melayu have acquired out of the need to show-off whatever reputation he thinks he might have.

Even the Melayu man-in-the-street does not have any shame to belittle his own reputation anymore and have also started to feel like they have been Americanized and would gladly show a finger or two and an ugly face in the camera.

This was not the case before; but it is now. There is no guilt in doing bad things and saying stupid things anymore as long as they think they can get some measure of personal satisfaction from becoming the highlight of the media, either mainstream or social.

The Melayu are unlike the Chinese and Indians; who had created differences between those who have English-schooling background and those who have Sekolah Kebangsaan background, and those who studied in the West and in the Middle East; those who wear English-style suits and those who wear the Arab robes and turbans or jubah and sarban.

It is ironic and pitiful because there is so much diversity and differences in the Melayu who profess the same religion of Islam but alas this diversity has been used and misused by groups within the political system to sow hatred of each other.

Worse, when there are non-Melayu political parties who enlist them to serve their cause now seen to be common causes which is to dislodge the government of the day simply because they could be so easily manipulated through incessant pseudo-political prodding and being made to feel empowered.

If this is also not enough the medias that are now popular such as film, television, newspapers and magazines and radio as well as the social media, have collectively or individually allowed this problem to become more amplified.

In the end what can be seen is how the Melayu are fractured by their different racial groupings such as Melayu, Bugis, Jawa, etc. by those who know how to use such silly trick; and worse, how some are charged for being less Muslim or more Muslim thus allowing some groups to pass judgment or ‘personal fatwa’.

And to make it worse, the Melayu who are in charge of managing emotions and feelings through the creation of creative works to be shown on television and the stage all have become complicit in encouraging this problem to happen in the first place and to further inflame the feelings and emotions and whatever intellectual power that the Melayu may have to be used against each other.

The other factors are the fact that there is the urban drift of Melayu who are from the villages or ‘kampung’ who migrated to the urban areas because of schooling and those who are still there; and those groups of middle class Melayu created by the New Economic Policy (NEP) and who have attained, or so they thought, some measure of financial and social independence, so they become crass with their ways and attitudes and newly acquired values.